Robert Lipsyte

Welcome to my Home Page and all my best wishes for a great new year. Please feel free to e-mail any suggestions of what you would like to see on my website.

But first, rush out and buy my wife's wonderful new book (I wrote the foreword) "Along the Roaring River: From Mao to the Met" by Hao Jiang Tian with Lois B. Morris. Published last year by Wiley, it got starred reviews from Kirkus and the Library Journal.

My own latest YA novel, "Yellow Flag," came out in September, 2007. It's about a famous stock car racing family and the grandson who has been picked to carry on the tradition. He's not sure he wants to be in the hot seat.

"Yellow Flag" is dedicated to my former editor at HarperCollins, Ruth Katcher, who also edited "Raiders Night," which came out in paperback in July, 2007. "Raiders Night" is my toughest novel so far, about the aftermath of a hazing incident at a high school football training camp. Sort of a Friday Night Darks. The central character in the book and star of the team, Matt Rydek, has it all - an abusive father, a vengeful ex-girlfriend, a drug habit and a moral dilemma: Should he risk his college ride by telling the truth about that brutal Raiders night?

Apparently many athletic directors and principals were afraid the book would affect their hopes of turning high school sports into a pay-off; they disinvited me after their librarians and English teachers booked me for school appearances. I wrote about this for ESPN.COM and you can read it in the JOCK CULTURE section where I drop sports pieces.

I'll be using THE LIPSITE page for articles you might enjoy and whatever is currently on my mind. Right now, there's a piece I wrote several years ago for The New York Times on being a YA writer and one on NASCAR and politics that appeared in TOMDISPATCH. COM, a wonderful political website to which I sometimes contribute.

While you are in a reading mood, pick up my son Sam Lipsyte's latest novel, "Home Land," and my daughter-in-law Ceridwen Morris' "From the Hips: A comprehensive, open-minded, uncensored, totally honest guide to pregnancy, birth and becoming a parent." Ceridwen's co-author is Rebecca Odes.

I traveled some last year, to the Texas Library Association conference in Dallas, and to the Positive Coaching Alliance's conference and awards banquet at Stanford University. PCA is a great outfit and an antidote to the Raiders Night mentality.

I've also been to Pace University in Pleasantville, N.Y., to Kennesaw State University outside Atlanta, to Wallkill (N.Y.) High School and in October to the first Youth Literature Festival at the University of Illinois at Champign. Terrific.

I met the greatest bunch of sports fans at the Homeless Veterans Residence Program in Menlo Park, California. Those guys rocked. And they have some pretty good teams, too.

A new project for me is hosting LIFE(Part 2), a weekly half-hour PBS show that will begin airing in September, 2009. The show looks at the physical, mental and emotional issues of the boomer generation as it ages. The show is produced out of Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) which means trips to St. Paul, Minnesota, a warm city even in winter. I'll keep you up to date on the show in the LIFE(Part2) section.

But that doesn't mean I've stopped writing. I'm on the final revisions of "Center Field" a new YA with a high school baseball background. Brenda Bowen, who is my new editor at HarperCollins, has own imprint. We're looking forward to publication next year. I'm also working on my memoirs "Lessons from the Locker-Room: The Education of an Accidental Sporstwriter." HarperCollins will be publishing it.

But I've still got time to answer your e-mails. So don't forget to drop me a line.